Library Lovers' Day

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Hello and welcome to Hear This. I'm Frances Keyland, and you're listening to the Vision Australia Library radio show, where we talk about books in the Vision Australia collection. And we celebrate today our Library Lovers Day, and also World Radio Day. So I hope you enjoy the show. Today we're celebrating World Radio Day, Library lovers day, and of course, Valentine's Day. 

But I did receive a lovely email, over the last month from Karen. And this was... her memories of radio growing up - and some lovely memories here that I'm sure people can identify with, growing up. As a child Karen says. I remember the large wireless sitting on a cabinet in a corner of the lounge room. It was always on, so we listened to the ABC news each hour, and it was spoken with a more British accent in the days, and lasted a long time. To us children, we were encouraged to be worldly and knowing what events were happening everywhere. 

My father was from Europe, so loved his shortwave listening in his first language, Dutch. My mother sang and danced doing the housework mainly to singers like Frank Ifield and Frank Sinatra. Mum also had the wireless to herself on evenings when her favourite cereal, inspector May grey, was on and we had to be very quietly playing then. Karen also reminisces about the Argonauts Club. My sisters weren't interested, so I had this hour to myself. I learned how to write compositions and use more words and enjoyed all the all the entertainment at the end of the show. I recall a lovely piano piece and I believe this was played by a blind girl. So anybody that knows about the piano piece at the end of The Argonauts let us know. 

I was so impressed that someone without eyesight could do this. I still have the badges and books I received when visiting family in the country. I remember the wireless always having the serial Blue Hills on, and the music still reminds me of this today. And yes, the advent of television.... once we... were in our mid-teens, we moved and got a television, and the wireless went into dad's study and mum had a nice radio and the importance of radio as well. Not just entertainment and not just world news, but local news. 

Karen goes on to say, as a mother myself, the radio is always on at home and I have never stopped listening to the ABC for news and wake up with the alarm and put it on. Living in the Darling Ranges, the ABC kept us fully aware of any bushfires and we had a fire one year and I kept listening until it was moving closer to our part of the suburb. Then we decided to leave before there was a mad panic. This was essential to living where we were in a very, very fire prone suburb. Karen moves on in a really nice way to... today's... radio days. So today we can interact with all with the presenters, with text messages and phone calls.

And Karen gives a bit of a shout out to Australia all over on Sunday mornings... and says, It's comforting to hear that people around our country are living very normal lives, as the news these days presents more crime and sadness, giving a very negative... slant on life. Thank you so much, Karen. That was such a lovely memory and going through the history of radio there in that one little email. Thank you so much for sending that to us. And happy Radio day to all of Vision Australia Radio's listeners. 

As it has been a Library Lovers' Day as well. And the library has some wonderful events today, on the 14th today when I'm recording this. So there's going to be the in conversation with Emily Maguire talking about her book Rapture. So if you've registered for that, I hope you enjoy that today. We also heard from Janine, who recommended a book, and I thought it was perfect for Library Lovers Day. It is The Little Wartime Library. This is by Kate Thompson. 

London, 1944. Clara Button is no ordinary librarian. While the world remains at war in east London, Clara has created the country's own underground library, built over the tracks in the disused Bethnal Green tube station. Down here, a secret community thrives, with thousands of bunk beds, a nursery, a cafe and a theatre offering shelter, solace, and escape from the bombs that fall above. Along with her glamorous best friend and library assistant, Ruby Monroe, Clara ensures the library is the beating heart of life underground. But as the war drags on, the women's determination to remain strong in the face of adversity is tested to the limits when it seems it may come at the price of keeping those closest to them alive. 

Let's hear a sample of The Little Wartime Library by Kate Thompson. It's narrated by Sarah Durham.

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He's crying aloud in the library. Heavens above. Where did you spring from? Clara blinked back her tears. I thought I'd locked the door. It wasn't exactly seemly for a librarian to be seen. Blubbing, red eyed and snotty over her returns trolley. Clara peered over the counter. A small face peaked back behind a long fringe. Sorry, sweetheart. Shall we start again? I'm Clara button. I'm the branch librarian. Hello, I'm Mary. The girl blew upwards and her fringe started to reveal curious brown eyes. Want a boiled sweet Mary? Sweets allowed. I have a secret stash of sherbet lemons. She winked. For emergencies. The eyes widened. I knew it. Your favourite. Mary's hand shot out to take the sweet and crammed it in her mouth. 

How do you know? I know everyone's favourite. Bet you don't know my favourite book. Bet I do. Now let me see. How old are you? She pressed eight fingers close to Clara's face. Eight. What a grand age to be. Clara walked to the children's section of the library and scuttled her fingers along the shelves like a spider. The girl grinned, amused by the game. Her finger stopped at Black Beauty to sad, then travelled on to Cinderella to Pink before slowly coming to rest on the wind in the Willows. Am I right? She nodded. I love the toad best. Murray's eyes ran greedily over Clara's carefully stocked library. It's like Aladdin's cave in here.

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That was The Little Wartime library by Kate Thompson. Kate is Kay Thompson is [spells name]. That book goes for... 12 hours. 12.5 hours. And thank you to Janine for recommending that. And I love that... opening to the book there, where the magic of libraries... and when you're a kid, I remember my first library book I ever borrowed was The Folk of the Faraway Tree, and I was so excited to get my hands on it. Libraries and radio. When you really think about them, the impact they have on our lives and they're both... such great sources of information. 

And if you like that book, there are some others by Kate Thompson in the collection. There's The Allotment Girls. There is... The Secrets of the Sewing Bee, Secrets of the Singer Girls and the Wedding Girls. A little bit about Kate Thompson. She was born in London and worked as a journalist for 20 years on women's magazines and national newspapers. She has ghost written five memoirs, and it was after that that Kate moved into fiction. Today she works as a journalist and author and library campaigner, and her most recent book, The Little Wartime Library, was published in 2022. She is passionate about capturing lost voices and untold social histories. 

And thank you to Sandy for sending through two recommendations for some a couple of books. The first one is Beyond: the Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey Into Space. This is by Stephen Walker. On April 12th, 1961, 27-year-old Yuri Gagarin climbed inside a tiny spherical capsule on top of the Soviet Union's most powerful intercontinental intercontinental ballistic missile and blasted into space, becoming the first human to leave Earth, for over a year. He and 19 other cosmonauts had trained in secret for this pioneering mission. 

Let's hear a sample of Beyond: the Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey Into Space, by Stephen Walker. It's narrated by David Rintoul.

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December the 24th, 1960, 60km west of Tura, Siberia, USSR. In every direction, for as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but taiga, the dense, dark Siberian forest of spruce and birch and fir trees unfolding to the distant horizon and beyond. The helicopter flew low, the dull thud of its rotor blades the only sound to puncture the silence of this primeval landscape, otherwise bereft of humans and thickly wrapped in snow and the snow was everywhere. It blinded the eyes and coated the tops of the trees, and made it even harder, if that were possible, for Arvid Vladimirovich Pala to find what he was looking for. 

Nor did it help that there was not much daylight left in this region of Siberia at this time of year. The days lasted barely four hours. They had been flying for nearly 30 minutes now, and in two hours the forest below would disappear into yet another long subarctic night. But by then, polar and his team might be too late. Somewhere out there, lying in the snow in one of the remotest places on the planet, was an empty aluminium sphere, slightly more than two meters in diameter, weighing two and a half tons, and somewhere close by it. Pala hoped, was a sealed metal box containing two dogs.

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And that was Beyond: the Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey Into Space, by Stephen Walker. Stephen is [spells name]. And that book goes for 15.5 hours, and it's been reviewed quite... by a lot of different places, not just places that sell the book and say it's wonderful. But the London Review of Books calls it... Thrilling, high definition history, tight, thrilling and beautifully researched. So that's from... the London Review, April 2021. Kirkus reviews calls it... A welcome addition to the literature of space exploration, shedding light on the Soviet contribution, an energetic history of the first years of the space race. 

And Sandy recommended another book, which looks really fascinating for those who... love... psychology: Fake love: Understanding and Healing from Narcissistic Abuse. So the following... book contains material that may be harmful or... traumatising to some people. Listener discretion is advised. So in Fake Love: Understanding and Healing from Narcissistic Abuse by Nova Gibson... the love of a narcissist is fake. It's a soul-destroying realisation that every... for every victim of narcissistic abuse. But even more damaging is finding yourself trapped and abused by the person who claims they love you. 

Nova Gibson has helped thousands of people in their struggle to understand and extricate themselves and heal from toxic relationships, narcissistic abuse and coercive control. With the expertise gained from over a decade of working with clients, Nova offers comfort, knowledge, and powerful strategies to help you identify, navigate, and survive this extremely covert, confusing, and dangerous form of abuse. Nova brings unparalleled insight into the lives, into the lived experience of victims and helps identify the Identify the behaviors of narcissistic abusers, such as coercive control and gaslighting, pathological lying, the love bomb, devalue-discard cycle, hoovering, smear campaigns and many, many more. 

She also helps you understand covert and overt narcissism, and explores in depth the concept of trauma bonding in this deeply compassionate audio book. Nova offers hope, support, and practical strategies to protect and extricate yourself and most importantly, heal. Let's hear a sample of Fake Love: Understanding and Healing from Narcissistic Abuse by Nova Gibson. It's narrated by Rachel Tidd.

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One day, Sophie woke up and realised that her soulmate had turned into someone she didn't recognise. The person who remained hated her. He also appeared to dislike one of their three children, and made no attempt to hide his... preference for their eldest child. Their youngest child. Their son was simply invisible to him and no longer even tried to. Gain his father's attention, let alone affection. It was distressing to. Watch her children, who were in constant competition with each other. Become resentful of each other. It seemed that as a wife and mother, Sophie couldn't do anything right, anymore. 

Why did he change? Who was this person who made her feel so? Ugly and worthless and couldn't seem to love his own children? What could she do? She wanted her soulmate back. She wanted him to tell her how to get back to their former blissful bubble. But he wouldn't. She wanted him to realize how much his younger children loved him, and for him to give them the love that he showed their eldest child. But again, he wouldn't. Yet she couldn't leave him. Sophie thought that if she just tried harder one day, her soulmate would return. Such is the reasoning of every victim of narcissistic abuse.

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And that was Fake Love: Understanding and and Healing from Narcissistic Abuse by Nova Gibson. Nova is spelt [spells name]. That book goes for nine hours. Thank you, Sandy, for recommending those two books. 

Now to a couple of Australian authors who are incredibly well loved, even lionised. The first author is Tim Winton and his book Juice. Two fugitives, a man and a child drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a... forsaken place - middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sunbaked trash. They're exhausted, traumatised, desperate, now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they've seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, This could work. Problem is, they're not alone. 

So begins a searing, propulsive journey through a life whose central challenge is not simply a matter of survival, but of how to maintain human decency as everyone around you falls ever further into barbarism. Let's hear a sample of Juice by Tim Winton. It's narrated by David Field.

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So I drive until first light and only stop when the plane turns black, and there's nothing between us and the horizon but Clinkers and ash. I pull up, drop the side screen. The southern air is mercifully still this morning, and that's the only stroke of luck we've had in days. I know what wind does to an old fireground in a gale. The ash can fill your lungs in minutes. I've seen comrades drowning on their feet, clambered over the windrows of their bodies. I wrapped the scarf over my nose and mouth, hang the glasses from my neck, crack the door and step down, testing the surfaces gently as I can, ankle deep to the shins at worst. No sound out here but the whine of our rig's motors. 

Stay there, I call. I know she's awake, but the child, slumped in the corner of the cab does not move. I walk back gingerly to check the trailer. Everything is still cinched down as it should be. The maker, the water pods and implements. Although the days of hard running have left my greens in disarray. The leafier edibles are wind burnt, but overall the losses seem manageable. I tapped the reservoir to fill my flask. Then with the glasses, I scanned the western approaches. No plumes. No movement. We're clear.

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And that was a sample of Juice by Tim Winton. Tim Winton is [spells name]. That book goes for 14 hours and 12 minutes. A fairly recent book that was published in October 2024. So as the awards season comes up, we might see that on the lists, ubeing nominated for awards throughout the year. Rachel Seyfert the 17th of October, 2024, in The Guardian: Centuries from now, this gripping tale of retribution echoes the corporations who fueled climate breakdown, and it has echoes of Cormac McCarthy.

And I did think that during the... excerpt there that I was reading because of... Cormac McCarthy's amazing and fairly short book, The Road. And if you ever want to read a tear jerker and a set in a post-apocalyptic world, father and son on the road, just travelling, it's a heartbreaker. The review also ends with... Winton's ending is a masterstroke. The heart-in-your-mouth final chapter one of the best things I've read in a long time. That's from the review of Juice by Rachel Seiffert, Thursday, October the 17th, 2020.

For the Next Book it's a non-fiction by Helen Garner. The title is The Season. And yeah, it's three weeks, I think till the footy starts here... again, the football season. So people might want to read this in preparation. It's footy season in Melbourne and Helen Garner is following her grandson's under 16 team. She's a passionate Western Bulldogs fan who loves the epic theatre of AFL football, but her devotion to the Under-16s offers her something else. This is her chance to connect with her youngest grandchild, to be close to him before he rushes headlong into manhood, to witness his triumphs and defeats, to fear for his safety in battle, to gasp and to cheer for his team as it fights for a place in the finals. 

With her sharp eye, her generous wit and her warm humour, Garner documents this pivotal moment both as part of the story and as silent witness. Garner's new work in a decade is a tender portrayal of the relationship between grandmother and grandson, and of that moment on the cusp of adulthood, when a boy is both child and man. Let's hear a sample of The Season by Helen Garner. It's narrated by Helen Garner.

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I pull up at the curb. I love this park they train in. I must have walked the figure of eight round its ovals hundreds of times. At dawn in winter and summer, to throw the ball for dozer, our red heeler. But he's buried now in the back yard under the crape myrtle near the chook pen. The boy jumps out with his footy and trots away, bouncing it. Boy, look at him. He's been playing with our suburban club since he was a tubby little eight year old. I've never paid more than token attention to his sporting life, but this year he's in the under 16. The shoulders on him. He must be almost six feet tall. He's the youngest of my three grandchildren. The last. And there will be no more. 

At breakfast time, I say. Can I start coming to training? What? Why? I don't know. I've got no work. I'm burnt out. I don't know what to do with myself. I need something to write about. You better ask the coach. Who's the coach? We've got a new one. It's Archie. What? The Archie we know. Isn't he only a boy? How old is he? About 20, says Abby's mum, who remembers important facts. Can you be a coach when you're only five years older than the players? Under an umbrella outside the cafe. Tall and skinny. White t shirt and baseball cap. Is that him? I come up behind him and he turns pale skin, bright blue eyes with black lashes. Face splitting grin. Clever, funny. Jumping out of his skin. Ready to pick up a thought and go with it. Footy, he says, is the most hilariously unnatural sport, running backwards.

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And that was the season by Helen Garner. Helen is [spells name] And that book is a short one. 44 hours and 44 minutes. 

And now to The Women, a novel by Kristin Hannah. Women can be heroes, too. When 20 year old nursing student Frances Francie McGrath hears these unexpected words, it is a revelation. Raised on California's idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing and being a good girl. But in 1965, the world is changing and she suddenly imagines a different path for her life. 

When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she impulsively joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path as green and inexperienced as the young men sent to Vietnam to fight. Francie is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war, as well as the unexpected trauma of coming home to a changed America. Francie will also discover the true value of value of female friendship and the heartbreak that love can cause. Let's hear a sample of The Women by Kristin Hannah. It's narrated by Julia Whelan.

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Coronado Island, California, May 1966. The walled and gated McGrath estate was a world unto itself, protected and private. On this twilit evening, the Tudor style homes mullioned windows glowed jewel like amid the lush landscaped grounds. Palm fronds swayed overhead. Candles floated on the surface of the pool, and golden lanterns hung from the branches of a large California live oak. Black clad servers moved among the well-dressed crowd, carrying silver trays full of champagne, while a jazz trio played softly in the corner. 

20 year old Frances Grace McGrath knew what was expected of her tonight. She was to be the very portrait of a well-bred young lady, smiling and serene. Any untoward emotions were to be contained and concealed, borne in silence. The lessons Frankie had been taught at home and at church, and at Saint Bernadette's Academy for girls, had instilled in her a rigorous sense of propriety. The unrest going on across the country these days, erupting on city streets and college campuses, was a distant and alien world to her. As incomprehensible as the conflict in far away Vietnam, she circulated among the guests, sipping an ice cold Coca-Cola, trying to smile, stopping now and then to make small talk with her parents friends, hoping her worry didn't show. 

All the while, her gaze searched the crowd for her brother, who was late to his own party. Frankie idolised her older brother, Finley. They'd always been inseparable. A pair of black haired, blue eyed kids less than two years apart in age, who'd spent the long California summers unsupervised by adults riding their bikes from one end of sleepy Coronado Island to the other, rarely coming home before nightfall.

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And that was a sample of The Women by Kristin Hannah. Kristin is spelt [spells name]. That book goes for 15 hours. The New York Times reviewed this book on February the 1st, 2024. Beatrice Williams is the reviewer. Beatrice writes... If you grew up in the 80s, the Vietnam Redemption arc was imprinted on your gray matter by a stampede of young novelists and filmmakers coming to grips with their foundational trauma the return home to a hostile nation, patriotic innocence shattered by the barbarity of jungle warfare and the chasm of despair and despair and addiction and finally, the healing power of activism. 

Beatrice continues... This was the generational narrative told and retold in classics like born on the 4th of July and The Things They Carried, The Ballad of the Boomer, a masculine coming of age cri de coeur. Now Kristin Hannah takes up the Vietnam epic and re-enters the story on the experiences of women. In this instance, the military nurses who worked under fire on bases and in field hospitals to patch soldiers back together or not. Beatrice finishes saying, I was struck not by the way the women radically reshapes the contours of the Vietnam narrative, but instead by how vividly the novel affirms them. 

Hannah may not offer any revolutionary takes on the war and its aftermath, but she gathers women into the experience with moving conviction. And maybe this story's time has come again, she says. Over dinner one night, I described The women to my college age daughter, a young woman with her finger on the cultural pulse, and she perked right up. Wow, the Vietnam War, she said. You don't see much about that. 

Thank you so much for joining us today on Hear This, I'm Frances Keyland. If you have any recommendations... and those recommendations today were just fabulous to get... just let the library know you can give them a call on 1300 654 656. That's 1300 654 656. Or you can email library at... that's library@vision australia.org -  we welcome any recommendations, any suggestions. And also if you just want to join the library or explore the catalogue or talk to a staff member. Have a lovely week and we'll be back next week with more Hear This.